The Santaroga Barrier Read online

  Scheler of the independent service station (Dasein wondered about this designation suddenly) was dark skinned, an angular Indian face with flat nose, heavy lips. Nis, across from him, was balding, sandy-haired, blue eyes with heavy lids, a wide mouth and deeply cleft chin.

  “Your menu, sir.”

  The waiter placed a large red-covered folder in front of Dasein.

  “Dr. Piaget and his friends appear to be enjoying their game,” Dasein said.

  “That game’s an institution, sir. Every week about this hour, regular as sunset—dinner here and that game.”

  “What do they play?”

  “It varies, sir. Sometimes it’s bridge, sometimes pinochle. They play whist on occasion and even poker.”

  “What did you mean—independent service station?” Dasein asked. He looked up at the dark Moorish face.

  “Well, sir, we here in the valley don’t mess around with those companies fixin’ their prices. Mr. Sam, he buys from whoever gives him the best offer. We pay about four cents less a gallon here.”

  Dasein made a mental note to investigate this aspect of the Santaroga Barrier. It was in character, not buying from the big companies, but where did they get their oil products?

  “The roast beef is very good, sir,” the waiter said, pointing to the menu.

  “You recommend it, eh?”

  “I do that, sir. Grain fattened right here in the valley. We have fresh corn on the cob, potatoes Jaspers—that’s with cheese sauce, very good, and we have hot-house strawberries for dessert.”

  “Salad?” Dasein asked.

  “Our salad greens aren’t very good this week, sir. I’ll bring you the soup. It’s borscht with sour cream. And you’d like beer with that. I’ll see if I can’t get you some of our local product.”

  “With you around I don’t need a menu,” Dasein said. He returned the red-covered folder. “Bring it on before I start eating the tablecloth.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Dasein watched the retreating black—white coated, wide, confident. Othello, indeed.

  The waiter returned presently with a steaming bowl of soup, a white island of sour cream floating in it, and a darkly amber mug of beer.

  “I note you’re the only Negro waiter here,” Dasein said. “Isn’t that kind of type casting?”

  “You asking if I’m their show Negro, sir?” The waiter’s voice was suddenly wary.

  “I was wondering if Santaroga had any integration problems.”

  “Must be thirty, forty colored families in the valley, sir. We don’t rightly emphasize the distinction of skin color here.” The voice was hard, curt.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Dasein said.

  “You didn’t offend me.” A smile touched the corners of his mouth, was gone. “I must admit a Negro waiter is a kind of institutional accent. Place like this …” He glanced around the solid, paneled room. “ … must’ve had plenty of Negro waiters here in its day. Kind of like local color having me on the job.” Again, that flashing smile. “It’s a good job, and my kids are doing even better. Two of ’em work in the Co-op; other’s going to be a lawyer.”

  “You have three children?”

  “Two boys and a girl. If you’ll excuse me, sir; I have other tables.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Dasein lifted the mug of beer as the waiter left.

  He held the beer a moment beneath his nose. There was a tangy odor about it with a suggestion of cellars and mushrooms. Dasein remembered suddenly that Jenny had praised the local Santaroga beer. He sipped it—soft on the tongue, smooth, clean aftertaste of malt. It was everything Jenny had said.

  Jenny, he thought. Jenny … Jenny …

  Why had she never invited him to Santaroga on her regular weekend trips home? She’d never missed a weekend, he recalled. Their dates had always been in mid-week. He remembered what she’d told him about herself: orphaned, raised by the uncle, Piaget, and a maiden aunt … Sarah.

  Dasein took another drink of the beer, sampled the soup. They did go well together. The sour cream had a flavor reminiscent of the beer, a strange new tang.

  There’d never been any mistaking Jenny’s affection for him, Dasein thought. They’d had a thing, chemical, exciting. But no direct invitation to meet her family, see the valley. A hesitant probing, yes—what would he think of setting up practice in Santaroga? Sometime, he must talk to Uncle Larry about some interesting cases.

  What cases? Dasein wondered, remembering. The Santaroga information folders Dr. Selador had supplied were definite: “No reported cases of mental illness.”

  Jenny … Jenny …

  Dasein’s mind went back to the night he’d proposed. No hesitant probing on Jenny’s part then—Could he live in Santaroga?

  He could remember his own incredulous demand: “Why do we have to live in Santaroga?”

  “Because I can’t live anywhere else.” That was what she’d said. “Because I can’t live anywhere else.”

  Love me, love my valley.

  No amount of pleading could wring an explanation from her. She’d made that plain. In the end, he’d reacted with anger boiling out of injured manhood. Did she think he couldn’t support her any place but in Santaroga?

  “Come and see Santaroga,” she’d begged.

  “Not unless you’ll consider living outside.”

  Impasse.

  Remembering the fight, Dasein felt his cheeks go warm. It’d been finals week. She’d refused to answer his telephone calls for two days … and he’d refused to call after that. He’d retreated into a hurt shell.

  And Jenny had gone back to her precious valley. When he’d written, swallowed his pride, offered to come and see her—no answer. Her valley had swallowed her.

  This valley.

  Dasein sighed, looked around the dining room, remembering Jenny’s intensity when she spoke about Santaroga. This paneled dining room, the Santarogans he could see, didn’t fit the picture in his mind.

  Why didn’t she answer my letters? he asked himself. Most likely she’s married. That must be it.

  Dasein saw his waiter come around the end of the bar with a tray. The bartender signaled, called: “Win.” The waiter stopped, rested the tray on the bar. Their heads moved close together beside the tray. Dasein received the impression they were arguing. Presently, the waiter said something with a chopping motion of the head, grabbed up the tray, brought it to Dasein’s table.

  “Doggone busybody,” he said as he put the tray down across from Dasein, began distributing the dishes from it. “Try to tell me I can’t give you Jaspers! Good friend of Jenny’s and I can’t give him Jaspers.”

  The waiter’s anger cooled; he shook his head, smiled, put a plate mounded with food before Dasein.

  “Too doggone many busybodies in this world, y’ ask me.”

  “The bartender,” Dasein said. “I heard him call you ‘Win.’”

  “Winston Burdeaux, sir, at your service.” He moved around the table closer to Dasein. “Wouldn’t give me any Jaspers beer for you this time, sir.” He took a frosted bottle from the tray, put it near the mug of beer he’d served earlier. “This isn’t as good as what I brought before. The food’s real Jaspers, though. Doggone busybody couldn’t stop me from doing that.”

  “Jaspers,” Dasein said. “I thought it was just the cheese.”

  Burdeaux pursed his lips, looked thoughtful. “Oh, no, sir. Jaspers, that’s in all the products from the Co-op. Didn’t Jenny ever tell you?” He frowned. “Haven’t you ever been up here in the valley with her, sir?”

  “No.” Dasein shook his head from side to side.

  “You are Dr. Dasein—Gilbert Dasein?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the fellow Jenny’s sweet on, then.” He grinned, said: “Eat up, sir. It’s good food.”

  Before Dasein could collect his thoughts, Burdeaux turned, hurried away.

  “You’re the fellow Jenny’s sweet on,” Dasein thought. Present tense … not p
ast tense. He felt his heart hammering, cursed himself for an idiot. It was just Burdeaux’s way of talking. That was all it could be.

  Confused, he bent to his food.

  The roast beef in his first bite lived up to Burdeaux’s prediction—tender, juicy. The cheese sauce on the potatoes had a flowing tang reminiscent of the beer and the sour cream.

  The fellow Jenny’s sweet on.

  Burdeaux’s words gripped Dasein’s mind as he ate, filled him with turmoil.

  Dasein looked up from his food, seeking Burdeaux. The waiter was nowhere in sight. Jaspers. It was this rich tang, this new flavor. His attention went to the bottle of beer, the non-Jaspers beer. Not as good? He sampled it directly from the bottle, found it left a bitter metallic aftertaste. A sip of the first beer from the mug—smooth, soothing. Dasein felt it cleared his head as it cleared his tongue of the other flavor.

  He put down the mug, looked across the room, caught the bartender staring at him, scowling. The man looked away.

  They were small things—two beers, an argument between a waiter and a bartender, a watchful bartender—nothing but clock ticks in a lifetime, but Dasein sensed danger in them. He reminded himself that two investigators had met fatal accidents in the Santaroga Valley—death by misadventure … a car going too fast around a corner, off the road into a ravine … a fall from a rocky ledge into a river—drowned. Natural accidents, so certified by state investigation.

  Thoughtful, Dasein returned to his food.

  Presently, Burdeaux brought the strawberries, hovered as Dasein sampled them.

  “Good, sir?”

  “Very good. Better than that bottle of beer.”

  “My fault, sir. Perhaps another time.” He coughed discreetly. “Does Jenny know you’re here?”

  Dasein put down his spoon, looked into his dish of strawberries as though trying to find his reflection there. His mind suddenly produced a memory picture of Jenny in a red dress, vital, laughing, bubbling with energy. “No … not yet,” he said.

  “You know Jenny’s still a single girl, sir?”

  Dasein glanced across to the card game. How leathery tan the players’ skin looked. Jenny not married? Dr. Piaget looked up from the card game, said something to the man on his left. They laughed.

  “Has … is she in the telephone directory, Mr. Burdeaux?” Dasein asked.

  “She lives with Dr. Piaget, sir. And why don’t you call me Win?”

  Dasein looked up at Burdeaux’s sharp Moorish face, wondering suddenly about the man. There was just a hint of southern accent in his voice. The probing friendliness, the volunteered information about Jenny—it was all faintly southern, intimate, kindly … but there were undertones of something else: a questing awareness, harsh and direct. The psychologist in Dasein was fully alert now.

  “Have you lived very long here in the valley, Win?” Dasein asked.

  “’Bout twelve years, sir.”

  “How’d you come to settle here?”

  Burdeaux shook his head. A rueful half-smile touched his lips. “Oh, you wouldn’t like to hear about that, sir.”

  “But I would.” Dasein stared up at Burdeaux, waiting. Somewhere there was a wedge that would open this valley’s mysteries to him. Jenny not married? Perhaps Burdeaux was that wedge. There was an open shyness about his own manner, Dasein knew, that invited confidences. He relied upon this now.

  “Well, if you really want to know, sir,” Burdeaux said. “I was in the N‘Orleans jailhouse for cuttin’ up.” (Dasein noted a sudden richening of the southern accent.) “We was doin’ our numbers, usin’ dirty language that’d make your neck hair walk. I suddenly heard myself doin’ that, sir. It made me review my thinkin’ and I saw it was kid stuff. Juvenile.” Burdeaux mouthed the word, proud of it. “Juvenile, sir. Well, when I got out of that jailhouse, the high sheriff tellin’ me never to come back, I went me home to my woman and I tol’ Annie, I tol’ her we was leavin’. That’s when we left to come here, sir.”

  “Just like that, you left?”

  “We hit the road on our feet, sir. It wasn’t easy an’ there was some places made us wish we’d never left. When we come here, though, we knew it was worth it.”

  “You just wandered until you came here?”

  “It was like God was leadin’ us, sir. This place, well, sir, it’s hard to explain. But … well, they insist I go to school to better myself. That’s one thing. I can speak good standard English when I want … when I think about it.” (The accent began to fade.)

  Dasein smiled encouragingly. “These must be very nice people here in the valley.”

  “I’m going to tell you something, sir,” Burdeaux said. “Maybe you can understand if I tell you about something happened to me here. It’s a thing would’ve hurt me pretty bad one time, but here … We were at a Jaspers party, sir. It was right after Willa, my girl, announced her engagement to Cal Nis. And George, Cal’s daddy, came over and put his arm across my shoulder. ‘Well there, Win, you old nigger bastard,’ he said, ‘we better have us a good drink and a talk together because our kids are going to make us related.’ That was it, Mr. Dasein. He didn’t mean a thing calling me nigger. It was just like … like the way we call a pale blonde fellow here Whitey. It was like saying my skin’s black for identification the way you might come into a room and ask for Al Marden and I’d say: ‘He’s that red-headed fellow over there playing cards.’ As he was saying it I knew that’s all he meant. It just came over me. It was being accepted for what I am. It was the friendliest thing George could do and that’s why he did it.”

  Dasein scowled trying to follow the train of Burdeaux’s meaning. Friendly to call him nigger?

  “I don’t think you understand it,” Burdeaux said. “Maybe you’d have to be black to understand. But … well, perhaps this’ll make you see it. A few minutes later, George said to me: ‘Hey, Win, I wonder what kind of grandchildren we’re going to have—light, dark or in between?’ It was just a kind of wonderment to him, that he might have black grandchildren. He didn’t care, really. He was curious. He found it interesting. You know, when I told Annie about that afterward, I cried. I was so happy I cried.”

  It was a long colloquy. Dasein could see realization of this fact come over Burdeaux. The man shook his head, muttered: “I talk too much. Guess I’d better …”

  He broke off at a sudden eruption of shouting at the bar near the card players. A red-faced fat man had stepped back from the bar and was flailing it with a briefcase as he shouted at the bartender.

  “You sons of bitches!” he screamed. “You think you’re too goddamn’ good to buy from me! My line isn’t good enough for you! You can make better …”

  The bartender grabbed the briefcase.

  “Leggo of that, you son of a bitch!” the fat man yelled. “You all think you’re so goddamn’ good like you’re some foreign country! An outsider am I? Let me tell you, you pack of foreigners! This is America! This is a free …”

  The red-headed highway patrol captain, Al Marden, had risen at the first sign of trouble. Now, he put a large hand on the screamer’s shoulder, shook the man once.

  The screaming stopped. The angry man whirled, raised the briefcase to hit Marden. In one long, drawn-out second, the man focused on Marden’s glaring eyes, the commanding face, hesitated.

  “I’m Captain Marden of the Highway Patrol,” Marden said. “And I’m telling you we won’t have any more of this.” His voice was calm, stern … and, Dasein thought, faintly amused.

  The angry man lowered the briefcase, swallowed.

  “You can go out and get in your car and leave Santaroga,” Marden said. “Now. And don’t come back. We’ll be watching for you, and we’ll run you in if we ever catch you in the valley again.”

  Anger drained from the fat man. His shoulders slumped. He swallowed, looked around at the room of staring eyes. “I’m glad to go,” he muttered. “Nothing’d make me happier. It’ll be a cold day in hell when I ever come back to your dirty little valley. You stink.
All of you stink.” He jerked his shoulder from Marden’s grasp, stalked out through the passage to the lobby.

  Marden returned to the card game shaking his head.

  Slowly, the room returned to its previous sounds of eating and conversation. Dasein could feel a difference, though. The salesman’s outburst had separated Santarogans and transients. An invisible wall had gone up. The transient families at their tables were hurrying their children, anxious to leave.

  Dasein felt the same urgency. There was a pack feeling about the room now—hunters and hunted. He smelled his own perspiration. His palms were sweaty. He noted that Burdeaux had gone.

  This is stupid! he thought. Jenny not married?

  He reminded himself that he was a psychologist, an observer. But the observer had to observe himself.

  Why am I reacting this way? he wondered. Jenny not married?

  Two of the transient families already were leaving, herding their young ahead of them, voices brittle, talking about going “on to the next town.”

  Why can’t they stay here? he asked himself. The rates are reasonable.

  He pictured the area in his mind: Porterville was twenty-five miles away, ten miles outside the valley on the road he had taken. The other direction led over a winding, twisting mountain road some forty miles before connecting with Highway 395. The closest communities were to the south along 395, at least seventy miles. This was an area of National Forests, lakes, fire roads, moonscape ridges of lava rock—all of it sparsely inhabited except for the Santaroga Valley. Why would people want to travel through such an area at night rather than stay at this inn?

  Dasein finished his meal, left the rest of the beer. He had to talk this place over with his department head, Dr. Chami Selador, before making another move. Burdeaux had left the check on a discreet brown tray—three dollars and eighty-six cents. Dasein put a five dollar bill on the tray, glanced once more around the room. The surface appeared so damn’ normal! The card players were intent on their game. The bartender was hunched over, chatting with two customers. A child at a table off to the right was complaining that she didn’t want to drink her milk.